The Devil's Garden (26 page)

‘What about him?’ the Boy asked.

‘Carlos shot him in the ass.’

The Boy nodded, indifferent. ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

We passed behind the first hut and circled around the second. The path beyond was quieter. Up towards the generator, there were lights. I realized with a start that the Judge was still here
– or else someone was using his hut.

Tord’s voice was sticky with unctuousness. ‘Thank you for guiding us,’ he said to the Boy.

Kim coughed.

The Boy said nothing but instead pointed with his gun for us to mount the stairs.

Inside, maps covered the walls, the rivers like blue capillaries. A dim flickering bulb hung bare from the ceiling. There was a small table against the wall on which were
arranged a few smeared tumblers, a bottle of my whiskey and an absurd lava lamp. A large field desk stood athwart the entire width of the hut; beside it crouched a surreal life-sized black puma
– mid-snarl, stuffed or fake I could not tell; and behind it sat Captain Lugo cutting up what remained of a steak with an ostentatious knife.

‘Captain, where is the Colonel?’ I spoke immediately. ‘And where’s my colleague? Why have you arrested us?’

He forked himself a piece, keeping watch on me as he chewed, his eyes empty but somehow avid – the eyes of an addict, I thought, about to begin his ritual.

I pressed him. ‘Captain, where is the Colonel?’

He swigged from his bottle of beer. There were boxes stacked under and all around the bed behind him – the firearms and ammunition with which he slept.

‘We are leaving tomorrow,’ I said. ‘All of us. Including my colleague.’

With slow deliberation, he continued to eat. Beneath his toreador machismo, he was enjoying the theatre of this performance before the others, subconsciously seeking to enlist me in the role of
an adversary against whom he could further burnish his authority.

I turned away.

‘I want this to be easy, Doctor.’ He spoke up though his mouth was full of meat. ‘I’ve got plenty of difficult.’

The Boy held his rifle crossways to block my path.

This time I did not speak.

‘Tell me,’ Lugo said, swallowing, ‘where were you yesterday and the day before?’

I swung back round and stepped forward to face him. Either he had placed a pistol on the desk as a paper weight or I had not seen it before.

‘Yesterday, I was dying. But you know that. Your men arranged it.’

‘No. Not us. You’d be dead.’ He ran his tongue around his teeth. ‘You were with your friend – the German?’

‘Tell me what you want, Captain. Otherwise I am going to walk out of here and you will have to shoot me to stop me.’

‘I wouldn’t shoot you, Doctor. I would amuse my men first – take their minds off our own losses.’ He toyed with his steak using the tip of his knife. There was a little
pile of gristle that he had spat out on his plate. I felt a wave of nausea. ‘The Colonel wanted you to sign these statements.’ He indicated the papers with his knife. ‘And now
I
want you to sign them. That’s all. Then, tomorrow, you will be escorted to Laberinto.’

‘I’m not signing anything. And we do not need an escort to Laberinto. Where is my colleague?’

‘You do. You need an escort with big fat bullet-proof balls. For some reason the people we are fighting think we care about you. We keep telling them we don’t but – who knows?
– they might resort to kidnap. It happens.’ He grinned. ‘Plus the savages can’t be trusted one way or the other.’ He lifted his gun and pushed forward the pieces of
paper. His shirt was open and sweat slicked the dark hairs on his chest. ‘Really, it would be easier for you and for me for you just to sign. You can guess what they say.’

‘Sign what?’ Kim’s voice came from behind me. ‘Sign what? What is this about?’

He sat up, displaying the fake chivalry of a man who believes women to find him attractive. ‘Hello. Welcome to my office – and my bedroom.’

Kim stepped forward beside me. ‘What do you want us to sign?’ she asked.

Lugo kept his eyes on her. ‘A declaration that the German has been spying. And that he acted alone.’ With his free hand he swigged his beer. ‘It shouldn’t be a problem
for you – it’s the truth. Which we all love. Sign.’

Kim was looking at me.

He put down his bottle. ‘Once we have your signatures, we’ll let you go.’

‘We do not know anything about this,’ I said.

‘I believe you. But I don’t have to. All the evidence we need is on your computer and I’m told by my government that you’re responsible for your equipment.’

‘We’re leaving.’ I dragged his eyes back to mine with the aggression in my tone. ‘We’re leaving – all together – first thing tomorrow – and you
will not stop us unless you plan to shoot us. For the last time, where is my colleague?’

He returned to carving his meat.

‘You don’t think any of this matters,’ I said. ‘But it will.’

I began to turn again.

The jab in my back was vicious. I stumbled forward, crying out. The pain was as shocking as the precision – an expert’s strike targeted at a particular vertebra. I twisted my arm
behind me, clutching at my spine, breathing through my teeth.

Lugo drew his gun towards himself, away from where I was holding on to the edge of his desk. His eyes were alight. The ritual had begun. I must end it now or there would be no chance of
diverting him before blood was shed. I bowed my head and cursed and let the pain register so that the room would be absorbed by my hurt and the Boy would not strike again. I was certain it was
he.

I straightened, pressing my fingers into my back, clenching my jaw as I spoke. ‘If you let me read these pages overnight, then tomorrow I will sign whatever is true among the
accusations.’

Lugo leaned forward, his thin nose the more delicate for the rest of his muscled frame. ‘I can make you sign it in five minutes if I want.’ He spoke softly but so that the whole room
could hear. ‘Or if I like it better,I can take my time. I can cut off your balls and leave you needle and thread to sew up the bleeding yourself. Five days later, I can make you eat them
because you are so hungry you’ll swallow anything I put in front of you.’ He sat back again, picked up the gristle on the point of his knife. ‘So: you do it. You sign this. We are
happy. You go.’ He became matter of fact and, as he did so, flicked the gristle so that it hit my face and I felt it wet on the corner of my mouth. ‘Or you don’t sign it. And you
stay. And maybe you die here or maybe you don’t. Or maybe I’ll cut off your dick and feed it slice by slice to the dolphins myself. We like to enjoy ourselves in our work. Plenty of
people don’t get that chance.’ He pushed the papers towards me for what I knew would be the last time.

But suddenly Tord was between us, slamming down on Lugo’s desk with his right hand, half shouting, half incanting.

‘The Lord strikes down those who strike against him and in his wrath there is great vengeance,’ he said. ‘Do you believe in the saviour Jesus Christ who comes and takes away
the sins of the world?’

Again, he slammed. ‘Do you believe in Jesus Christ? For I tell you outside are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and those who loveth and maketh
lies.’ Spittle flew and his voice became high-pitched and raging as he leaned in past me. ‘Oh yes and I tell you this. The fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers,
and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all the liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. Which is a second death
.
’

But Lugo had now recovered from the shock. He seemed to look past us and wink at the Boy as he stood up. Then he thrust forward with such force that the entire desk began to tip over. The plate
slid and the bottle clattered, spraying beer in a dying arc. Somehow Tord managed to stand to one side, shouting all the while – ‘which is a second death, which is a second death’
– but I took the full weight of the desk as it fell. Struggling backward, trapped, I saw the puma’s teeth snarling and then, vivid as in a vision, I saw the calm in the Boy’s
brown eyes as he rose up in slow-motion certainty behind a still-bellowing Tord. And in his right hand I saw a strange half-moon shape that shone beneath the length of his extended thumb. And I saw
him seize Tord’s nose in his left hand with great violence, dragging the slighter man backwards, head up, shirt buttoned, straw hair neatly fringed, still incanting loudly, ‘Which is
the second death, which is the second death.’ And I saw Tord’s face turn puce as he struggled to breathe and wrestle the Devil that had at last been made manifest, clinging to his back
as his Bible had always said that Satan would. And I saw the Boy thrust finger and thumb of his right hand, deft and swift, into Tord’s mouth and with a strong and sudden upward twist I saw
him cut out the missionary’s tongue and in one movement hold it up still twitching to the light. And behind his metal I saw the childlike smile of one who has added to his count.

V

Chaos came. Tord howled and gurgled and cried out thickly for his God through the blood that gushed from his mouth and down his chin like some dark liquid goatee,
spattering right and left as they dragged him outside and threw him in the cart.

They made us walk ahead. Twice I tried to turn. Twice I received a blow to my shoulder that made me stumble forward. Beside me, Kim cursed and then begged and then threatened and then pleaded
until she too was hit and fell silent. All we could do was listen to the squeaking of the wheels and the terrifying unnatural sounds that Tord made and the screaming of the howler monkeys that
should have been asleep in the forest above us and the music that beat out from the
comedor
ahead boasting of murder and tribe and wealth and bitches.

Where before we had sat, now soldiers stood and drank and shouted, gathered in a horseshoe while a woman on her knees struggled against the hand that gripped the back of her head and the penis
that was being thrust into her mouth. The associate raised his rifle and cheered. And his greeting was met with answering salvos. All around, underneath the tarpaulins, human figures stirred in the
darkness – eyes, teeth, silhouettes. I looked for any sign of Sole, terror in my heart. But the point of the Boy’s rifle prodded at my spine whenever I slowed. Tord choked and spat and
bayed like an animal. Ants streamed the path. No god came.

VI

At the door to my hut, they told us to stop and began to speak among themselves. We dared not turn but listened, our heads bowed, silent, facing away.

They had forgotten the papers.

Lugo, in the exhilaration of his fury, had dealt out only violence and had not given any instruction. The Boy believed that they had been charged with having the statements signed. His associate
did not disagree but disliked the delay. The Boy contended that it would be shrewd to have the accusations here, with them, since if we did not sign, then there was more . . .
razón
.

Like some grotesque parody of inseparable childhood friends, they were obliged to go back with one another. But first the associate came in close behind and placed one hand through Kim’s
ripped shirt, his fingers groping, while with the other he opened the door. He tried to turn her to face him. She swung her elbows. He shoved her inside.

‘Ten minutes,’ he said, in a coarse whisper. ‘Then I’m yours.’

I turned and watched as they hoisted Tord up, his body sagging, his head swinging loose, blood and spittle stringing from his mouth. They mounted the steps with him, stopped, and without saying
anything simply pushed him forwards onto me where I stood.

We rolled Tord over on the bed and took off his shirt. Already he was pale and clammy. His body bucked aggressively, the strain of his breathing showing beneath his ribs as he
tried to suck in air. Our hands were sticky. There was so much blood.

Kim stood back. She turned to my rack, took off her own ragged blouse and selected a clean shirt. Quick and tight-fingered, she buttoned it up. She threw me a second. I tore it. She took a strip
and wiped her hands. I did the same. Then she stepped forward again and wound a fresh band around her wrist and wiped at Tord’s body with small hard movements of her thumbs.

Tord began to writhe. I held him down and looked up at Kim, wild-eyed beneath her hair. The violence had stripped through the layers of her person, leaving nothing but fear and the functions of
the body that time and space demanded. She had been reduced to some essence of herself, something she had always been, but that civilization had previously transfigured. And yet she had also found
her cunning and her instinct.

Tord was passing in and out of consciousness; his pale hair was congealed; his face, where we cleaned him, was alabaster white; his eyes, when they opened, glassy; his lips, when we found them,
blue. Kim must have known that he would die, but she would not be deterred by this.

‘What do you want me to do?’ she looked up. ‘Talk. What do you want me to do? You’re the—’

The door rattled. She stiffened. It seemed too soon for the Boy to have come back. They had barely been gone. They must have changed their plans and returned directly. Perhaps something had
happened at the
comedor
. Or perhaps there was some kind of a raid.

I started to speak, quickly, my voice low and steady. ‘When they come in, I want you to hold their attention. Don’t let them look at me and don’t look at me yourself. Do
whatever you have to. Keep their eyes on you. But don’t even glance at me.’ The door rattled again. I could not understand why they were having difficulty with the lock. ‘The Boy
will be the hardest to distract, but he will watch anything that is physical so you sh—’

‘The Virgin sent me.’ A hoarse whisper. ‘Doctor? Are you inside?’

‘Estrela?’

‘The Virgin sent me.’

Though she addressed us through a crack, I had never heard her speak so clearly. But before we could step over to the door, she had it open and the jungle night was pouring through – a
rising wave of insects and sound.

She stood short and squat on the porch – her dark face closed in on itself, chewing at her cheek, her old black clothes stained and her grey hair wiry and unkempt. The reflected light of
our lamps flickered in both of her eyes.